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They meet because of budget cuts. The maths and physics departments at TU Berlin are combined in an shortsighted attempt to save funds during Hermann’s second year of study. Most of the maths students see it as their department being pushed to the side, or swallowed up, by the much larger and more prestigious physics labs. But Hermann doesn’t see it that way at all. All he sees is Vanessa Eberstark. He sees her clear blue eyes, the brown hair that falls in a single shiny curtain down her back, and the small dimple that appears on her right cheek when she smiles. He hears her tinkling, bell-like laugh and he knows he’s lost.
By the start of the second semester, he’s worked his way into being Vanessa’s lab partner. She draws vector models while he massages equations and Hermann’s never been happier. She laughs at his jokes and, some days, his face hurts from smiling. Vanessa kisses him, slides her hand into his, and says, “I think I’m falling in love with you, Hermann.” In that moment, he can’t imagine wanting anything more than this for the rest of his life. They spend their summer creating equations and making love in a too hot flat near the Spree.
Newton Geiszler hits them like a hurricane. He slams into their quiet lab one afternoon, completely lost and looking for his guest lecturer office.
“Oh shit, sorry, am I interrupting?” Hermann and Vanessa stare up at him from their seats on the floor, Chinese takeaway boxes balanced on their knees. “Is that lo mein?”
Newt squeezes in between them, shovels a fork full of noodles to his mouth, and introduces himself. Vanessa laughs her crystal clear, bell trilling laugh. When Newt looks at Hermann, his eyes are so wide and so, so green that Hermann feels himself tumbling all over again. Late night lab Chinese takeaway dinners become sort of their tradition after that.
The three become inseparable. Newt lectures on Kaiju biology, Vanessa’s back to modeling vector equations, and Hermann is experimenting with the mathematical equations that will someday predict when the breach will open. Newt and Hermann bicker and Vanessa laughs at them, but never unkindly.
It takes three months, 11 pints, and one shot of tequila for the pieces to come fully together. They’re pressed too close together in the back corner of some terrible club that Hermann hates but Newt loves when Vanessa grabs Hermann’s face and kisses him long and hard. She twists, Hermann’s hands still on her hips, and kisses Newt. Hermann watches as their lips meet, as Newt’s hands tangle in Vanessa’s hair, and his tongue sweeps into her mouth. There’s no stab of jealousy or anger, just the slow burn of want and a spike of pure joy in his chest.
Twisting back to him, Vanessa murmurs, “I want to keep him. Can we keep him?” Hermann’s head is bobbing an enthusiastic yes right up until Newt leans over Vanessa and kisses him.
If the flat was too hot for just the two of them, with three it’s scorching.
***************
“MIT wants me to come back at the end of the summer.” Newt kicks absently at the scuffed kitchen floor in their flat. It really is “their” flat now since Newt moved all his things in weeks ago.
There’s a moment of silence before Hermann’s voice rings out strong and clear. “No. Don’t go back.”
“I think I have to. At least for awhile.”
Hermann kisses him, a hard and desperate crush of lips, until there’s no air left in his lungs. A whispered “Please.” is all Hermann can manage around the lump in his throat.
“I’ll come back. I promise.” Newt reaches out, catching Vanessa by the waist and pulling her to them. “I’ll come back to you two.”
They stand in their drab kitchen trading kisses and soft words of affection until the fear and panic sinks to a dull ache in Hermann’s chest.
Before pulling away, Newt smiles brightly. “I want to get a new tattoo before I go.”
“Another Kaiju tentacle?” Hermann rolls his eyes.
“No, I want a map of Berlin added to my chest plate.” At Hermann and Vanessa’s shared confusion, Newt shrugs. “It’s where I fell in love.”
It takes ten months. Ten months of missing him, of watching Vanessa miss him, and some of the most perverted uses of a webcam Hermann could never have imagined until Newt is back in their arms. They decide to get a bigger apartment this time but don’t bother unpacking Newt’s things in the second bedroom.
***************
When Vanessa tearfully tells them she’s pregnant, she’s six month from finishing her dissertation and none of them are ready for this.
Newt and Hermann hold hands in the clinic waiting room. Newt sniffles and cries a bit but Hermann is still too shell shocked to cry.
Crowded in their narrow bed that night, Vanessa cries and shakes. Hermann holds her against his chest and Newt curls behind her to kiss her shoulder and stroke her hair.
“Next time, love. We’ll have a baby someday. I promise.” Newt whispers against her skin.
“All of us? We’ll have a baby together?” Vanessa’s blue eyes look up at Hermann and he can’t deny her anything. He never would have denied her the three of them with a family anyway. He can’t stop thinking about Newt pacing the floor with an infant in his arms, or Vanessa teaching their daughter to ride a bike, or even himself showing their son how to draw.
“All of us. We’ll have a family, Vanessa. I promise.” Hermann steals a glance at Newt as Newt threads their fingers together against Vanessa’s hip.
“I love you,” Newt says with a gentle squeeze. “I love you too,” he whispers in Vanessa ear.
***************
They fight about the mess Newt leaves in the kitchen, in the bathroom, everywhere really. Vanessa refuses to get involved. But no matter how angry Newt makes him, Hermann forgets about it as soon as Newt kisses him, or sucks him, or pushes inside him. Vanessa does, thankfully, often get involved in the make up sex. Not always, though. Sometimes she just watches them with such a look of love and admiration that Hermann thinks his heart is too full to go on beating.
***************
The night Vanessa defends her dissertation and becomes Dr. Vanessa Eberstark is the night of Hermann’s accident. He leaves the two of them, flushed and happy, at a pub near the university. He intends to ride his bike home and be curled in bed waiting for his lovers to stumble home from their celebrations. He doesn’t intend to get side swiped by a drunk driver and end up unconscious on the side of the road, but that’s what happens anyway.
“Please, you have to let us in to see him.” Vanessa is tearful and her hands are twisting like ropes in front of her. “His family is hours away.”
“It’s family visitation only for patients in ICU.” The nurse is stern but not unkind.
“Please,” Newt chimes in. “She’s his girlfriend, has been for years, and I’m his...” There’s nothing adequate to explain what Newt is to Hermann, what the three of them are together. “I’m his best friend.”
“She can go in. But only for a few minutes.”
Vanessa is torn but Newt pushes her toward Hermann’s hospital room. After she disappears, the nurse speaks to him again. “He’ll be fine, you know. You can probably see him tomorrow.”
Vanessa’s gone for what seems like too long a time and Newt tries to keep his crying as silent as possible, but it echos off the hard hospital walls.
Together, they decide that Vanessa and Hermann should get married. It will give them some protection against things like this in the future, and Newt’s more of a free spirit anyway so it makes sense that he should look like the single one to the outside world.
Newt drags them to the tattoo parlor the morning of the wedding. He has each of their birth dates and the date of their wedding tattooed in tiny script around his ring finger. It’s plain black ink and seems to fade in comparison to the colorful, ever growing art on his arms and torso. But it stands out as something serious and vital to Newt that way.
He laughs and calls them his husband, Dr. Gottlieb, and his wife, Dr. Gottlieb, but it stings that he can’t do that in public.
***************
They both get jobs with the PPDC at the same time. Well, really Newt got a job and then browbeat Marshall Pentecost into hiring Hermann as well, but Hermann doesn’t know that.
Newt slings his arm around Hermann’s shoulder and pulls Hermann to lean against him. After the accident, Newt always stands on Hermann’s right side so Hermann can lean on him instead of the cane.
Hermann slides his arm around Newt’s waist and presses a kiss against his neck.
“We’ll be lab partners again!”
“We were never lab partners. Vanessa and I were lab partners. You were a messy distraction.”
“You love me.”
“Yes, but you’re still messy.”
“And a distraction.”
“And a distraction.” Hermann kisses Newt’s neck again and Vanessa calls them for dinner.
***************
The night before Newt and Hermann get sent to the Alaska Shatterdome for a six month deployment, they take turns making love to Vanessa. They spend hours loving her and showing her how much they’ll miss her while she stays behind in Berlin.
Exhausted and sore the next morning, Newt and Hermann board their flight. Vanessa is the only one who doesn’t cry.
“You’ll come back to me. I know you’ll both come back to me,” she whispers instead.
***************
“I understand we are in an isolated location, and you may be lonely, but sending inappropriate emails to your lab partner’s wife is way across the line, Dr. Geiszler.” Stacker Pentecost is furious. The only reason he hasn’t slammed Newton Geiszler’s head into a bulkhead is that HR told him to be gentle with the scientists.
“What? Oh, no. No, no, no. That’s not what that was.”
“I read the email, doctor. It was definitely inappropriate.”
“Which email?” Which, Newt quickly realizes, is not the correct question to ask a furious Stacker Pentecost.
“How long has this been going on? Why in fuck’s sake would you start a long distance affair with your colleague's wife? Unless you didn’t just start it. You were in Berlin with the Gottlieb’s before coming here.” Pentecost takes a seat behind his desk and puts his head in his hands. “Jesus, what have I stumbled into.”
“No! It’s not like that. Let me call Hermann. He’ll explain it better than I can.” Newt calls Hermann on the base issued walkie talkies and asks him to come to the Marshall’s office straight away. Pentecost keeps his head lowered to the palms of his hands until Hermann stumbles in.
“Hermann! Tell him it’s okay that I email Vanessa.” Newt has worked himself up from “awkwardly energetic” to “full blown panic”.
Hermann is obviously confused and looks between the two men. “Um, Dr. Geiszler can email whoever he wants.”
Pentecost rises from his chair to tower over the two smaller men. “Dr. Gottlieb. I’m sorry but I have to inform you that Dr. Geiszler has been sending your wife emails of a romantic nature.”
Hermann’s expression turns positively murderous.
“Hey!” Newt throws up his hands. “It’s not my fault they’re reading the outgoing emails!”
“You idiot!” Hermann hisses through his teeth. Newt drops his hands to his side and his gaze falls to the floor. Hermann turns back to a very confused Pentecost. “I’m sorry, Marshall. This is a personal matter and will not impact how Dr. Geiszler and I work together.”
“You can’t get out of this that easily. What the hell is going on here?”
Hermann hands clench and his face flushes bright red. “Dr. Geiszler, my wife, and I have been in a mutual romantic relationships for several years-”
“It’s called polyamory,” Newt unhelpfully chimes in. “It’s not that uncommon, either in humans or in the animal kingdom. I can give you examples-”
“No! I don’t need examples.” Pentecost turns back to a mortified Hermann. “You swear to me that this is all fine and good and is not going to affect your work?”
Hermann’s mumbled “yes” is barely intelligible.
“Then, out, both of you.” Pentecost sinks back to his desk as Hermann limps through the door Newt’s holding open for him.
Hermann locks Newt out of his bunk later that night in an attempt to cool down.
**************
They’re losing the war. It’s been years of working with the PPDC and it’s only getting worse. Funding is being cut and there’s talk of the Shatterdomes being shut down.
“I want to try again.” Vanessa’s voice is quiet in the dark.
“Try what again, dearest?” Hermann’s absently running his fingers against her thigh. Newt’s asleep next to him and hogging all the blankets.
“A baby. I want to have a baby.”
Hermann thinks about the Kaiju and the war and being trapped behind a wall he knows can’t stop the monsters. He thinks about bringing a child into that world and his heart nearly stops.
“But.. the war...”
“It may never end, Hermann. Please. I’m tired of waiting.”
He looks over his shoulder at Newt, still sound asleep, hair standing straight up, and tattoos loudly painted across half his body. The map of Berlin across his heart still looks fresh and new. Hermann knows what Newt’s answer will be.
“Okay, we can have a baby.”
Vanessa kisses him and even though it’s been years and thousands of kisses, the fierce shot of love and lust he feels when she touches him never fades. He rolls on top of her and soon enough Newt wakes up and joins them.
Only in the morning do they tell him what they want to do. They decide it doesn’t matter who the baby’s biological father is because they baby will belong to all of them regardless.
***************
They’re packing up the lab in the Sydney Shatterdome when Vanessa texts them a copy of the ultrasound. The picture comes through on both their phones at almost the same time, but Newt looks at his first. He presses it into Hermann’s hand and points to the accompanying message: It’s a girl! :)
The phone clatters to the worktop as Hermann grabs Newt’s collar and drags him into a kiss. They’re laughing and kissing and happiness bubbles up between them like champagne.
“Gottlieb! Geiszler!” Herc Hansen’s strident command echos off the packing crates and steel walls of the lab. “This is not the time or the place. And, Jesus, Gottlieb, don’t you have a wife at home?”
Newt tries to jump away but Hermann holds him close.
“Marshall Hansen, I do have a wife. I also have a husband and the three of us are having a daughter.” It is the first time Hermann had said anything so brazen out loud but he is so filled with joy and love that the embarrassment and fear he usually feels just won’t come to the surface. He loves Newt, he loves Vanessa, they love him, and they all love their daughter. Hermann refuses to hide how blessed he is for other people’s comfort. At least, that’s how he feels at the moment, caught in a giddy rush of endorphins.
Herc Hansen’s mouth open and closes a few times before it settles in a sly smile. “As you were then, doctors. And congratulations.”
Newt laughs and rests his forehead against Hermann’s. “I guess Pentecost never told anyone then.”
“Or he just didn’t believe us.”
Newt kisses him tenderly. “Hey. We’re going to save the world for her. You know that, right?”
Hermann just kisses him again.
That night, there’s a poorly made “It’s A Girl!” card in Hermann’s bunk. It’s addressed to him, Vanessa, and Newt and signed by the remaining Sydney Shatterdome crew.
***************
Finding Newt after his solo drift with the Kaiju brain is the most frightening experience of Hermann’s life. Drifting with him, trying to keep him safe, doesn’t even come close to the idea of finding him dead.
Everything happens so quickly after that, Hermann doesn’t have time to be angry at him anymore. They saved the world.
Newt snaps a picture of them with his phone: heads resting against each other and looking very much worse for wear. The jaeger repair crews and Tendo can be seen in the background, drinking someone’s emergency stash of bottled beer.
He sends it to Vanessa with the message We’re coming home to you.